A working/bootable Linux disk image recovered from an old 386 laptop with 2MB of RAM that was actually quite usable.
Chris Baird
914d48ace1
repaired swap partition, nuked scary .bash_history contents
|
1 year ago | |
|---|---|---|
| README | 1 year ago | |
| sable.cfg | 1 year ago | |
| sable.img.xz | 1 year ago | |
| sable1.jpg | 1 year ago | |
| sable2.jpg | 1 year ago | |
| stripped-linux-2.0.39.tar.gz | 1 year ago |
README
Back in the year 1999, I bought a Compaq 80386 laptop for $15 with 2MB
of RAM. $15 was like 3 weeks living expenses for me, but I had a laptop
finally!
I wanted to look at porn on its greyscale screen, but 2show and MSDOS
wouldn't cut it-- I did also want to write C code with GNU Emacs,
makefiles, and GCC.
On a path that involved preparing bootable floppies with an /sbin/init
that was an /bin/ash shell script that initalized the harddrive
partitions, created the swap, and untarred a bit more of the system to
get it single-user, I eventually made a highly customized kernel that
was as small as a Linux-2 kernel could be made. And finally got zgv
running.
Most of the utilities have been recompiled on that 2MB system, and the
source code of the 'finished' versions is in /usr/src/ -- including the
very-much stripped-down kernel. (Fun fact: the linux kernel source tree
was buildable on NetBSD at least at one point-- dunno if that's still
the case; it's been 20 years.) You also find some incomplete builds in
/tmp. Hopefully I removed all traces of the porn from the disk image I'm
distributing here.
To access in a perhaps more convenient way:
# losetup -f -P /home/thefoolord/sable.img
# mount /dev/loop0p1 /mnt
The Bochs emulator is what I used to get it running again in 2022. It
used to be QEMU, but the devs there have lost the plot. (I've long
thought about porting a i386 simulator to one of the STM32 devboards
with a good amount of SRAM to use this image with..)
of RAM. $15 was like 3 weeks living expenses for me, but I had a laptop
finally!
I wanted to look at porn on its greyscale screen, but 2show and MSDOS
wouldn't cut it-- I did also want to write C code with GNU Emacs,
makefiles, and GCC.
On a path that involved preparing bootable floppies with an /sbin/init
that was an /bin/ash shell script that initalized the harddrive
partitions, created the swap, and untarred a bit more of the system to
get it single-user, I eventually made a highly customized kernel that
was as small as a Linux-2 kernel could be made. And finally got zgv
running.
Most of the utilities have been recompiled on that 2MB system, and the
source code of the 'finished' versions is in /usr/src/ -- including the
very-much stripped-down kernel. (Fun fact: the linux kernel source tree
was buildable on NetBSD at least at one point-- dunno if that's still
the case; it's been 20 years.) You also find some incomplete builds in
/tmp. Hopefully I removed all traces of the porn from the disk image I'm
distributing here.
To access in a perhaps more convenient way:
# losetup -f -P /home/thefoolord/sable.img
# mount /dev/loop0p1 /mnt
The Bochs emulator is what I used to get it running again in 2022. It
used to be QEMU, but the devs there have lost the plot. (I've long
thought about porting a i386 simulator to one of the STM32 devboards
with a good amount of SRAM to use this image with..)